Four up with 11 to play. The Phillies can take a commanding five game lead in the National League East tonight with a win behind Roy Halladay. Atlanta is going to get sick of seeing aces real quick.

Halladay wants to join some elite company in Phillies history this evening. With a victory, he’ll get his 20th, putting him in a class with Steve Carlton, Chris Short, and Robin Roberts as the only pitchers since 1917 to have 20 wins or more for the club. Quite an honor.

Atlanta, in their quest for a playoff berth, is countering with 22-year old rookie Mike Minor. You’d think they would have set up the rotation in a way that would make this a series, but the Phillies have a clear advantage right now. As Charlie Manuel likes to say, it’s all about the here and now, he won’t look ahead and neither will the lot of these guys.

In his pre-game presser, he talked highly of Wilson Valdez. The 32-year old shortstop has done an admirable job of filling in for Jimmy Rollins, no matter how depressing his 19 double-plays are. As Rollins continues to heal slowly – there is no timetable yet for his return, but Manuel did say he’s getting better – Valdez will be called upon keep the defense in order. Can’t heap enough praise onto him.

This Maryland-based fall brew was ranked among the 10 best pumpkin beers by beerinfo.com, and tis the season. Beer Advocate gives it a solid B rating, so this is a fine brew to pick up while you enjoy the autumn breeze flowing through the open windows. Nose and flavors consist of cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, toasted grains, some sweet malt. Your usual pumpkin ale spice profile, but a tad muted. Makes it slightly easier to drink than Punkin Ale by Dogfish, in my opinion. – Pat GallenGO PHILLIES!

So I’m at work and I happened to meet this drunk couple from atlanta, who made a comment about how they wished their stadium sold as well as fenway. They then made comments about how they hoped philly lost the rest of the series, and that their players are ugly and their fans are the drunkest, ugliest, most obnoxious shit-talking assholes on the planet.

So I’m at work and I happened to meet this drunk couple from atlanta, who made a comment about how they wished their stadium sold as well as fenway. They then made comments about how they hoped philly lost the rest of the series, and that their players are ugly and their fans are the drunkest, ugliest, most obnoxious shit-talking assholes on the planet.

the braves announcers are bad. when it was Mets vs braves as my back up game
I chose the Mets and Kieth Hernanadez who is on a mental level of Bravoman. That sums up the Braves announcers.
Hope we score tonight

Andrew , for your kind information.. Those were first runs allowed by Mike Dunn this year in 20 games or so.., It was a big mistake by bobby to let him face so many batters today.., moylan should be facing Werth.., Well will see how it goes., Very rarely braves bullpen gives up runs.. this is one of those days.,

Pheeling, You are looking at braves 1B prospect in Freeman, He is 20years old btw, Phillies better win as long as they have the costly old players like Doc, Oswalt , howard, utley under control etc., because the next two decades atleast the division will belong to Braves..,

desi i like you but when you say things like the next two decades you just sound silly. You think the rest of the NL isn’t gonna have any good young players? The Phillies have the best lower minors in baseball.
Two levels of A ball just won back to back championships 2 years in a row.Baseball America listed Phils with highest amount of prospects in the low minors. Get ahold of yourself kid with the dominate for decades sillyness , besides teams like the Phils will always have the financial ability to fill in the pieces. This group of Phillies will have a long run when its all said and done , it started 3 years ago and has a while to go.

Jeff, We too have our share of injuries man.. We lost a few guys for rest of the season, thats much more telling on the team., stop complaining about injuries. in fact your bench was as good as your starters , You started winning after Hamels ressurected his second half and you traded for Oswalt. thats the big difference.

wrong..our bench guys kept us up..you lost larry who wanted to retire. we lost utley for most of the season, rollins for most of the season, howard for a couple weeks, madson, lidge, blanton, ruiz, poly here and there with raul.

JEFF , how old are you ? When you say something like players are bigger now I just shook my head in amazement. Baseball is the only sport where you could take all the greatest players from 50 years ago and they would still be great today. Willie MAYS , The MICK , I could make a list a mile long , Ted Wiliams played in the 40’s and he would still be great today. If anything they were better fundamentaly years ago then now. I cant help myself I have to give you more names , How bout Rod Carew , Pete Rose , dude i could go on and on Clemente , Bench , Seaver , Schmidt —— its silly to think the greats of yesterday wouldn’t be just as great today .

YEah great win…I would like to see the Phils deliver the knockout blow..they had plenty of chances….cant leave them Braves stick around…if we can get the sweep this will leave them a lil flat and give us a lil room for error…we still have a difficult schedule ahead of us….

If memory serves me
Ryan got there first. but got hurt and Carlton over took him and did hold the record for a bit. And they traded it back and fourth some.
But then Ryan just kept going and going. Was amazing

jeff , the NFL of course except for Jim Brown , he would be great today.But baseball is different , Bob Gibson , Carlton , Seaver , Nolan Ryan , Whitey Ford , Sandy Koufax , believe me they would dominate today , maybe more. Theres guys in the big leagues now that wouldn’t have even been in the league 20-30 years ago because of expansion.
As far as position players , come on , Willie Mays is still the best all around baseball player theyre ever was , the names i listed at 10:08 barely scratch the surface of all the great players from the 50’s ti’ll now
that ABSOLUTELY would post even better numbers cause theres guys pitching today that dont even belong in the bigs

Desi,
i wasn’t stating an opinion. It’s just fact. If they take it away one day, they do. But what if they find that Dale Murphy was roided up too?
The problem is we don’t know all of them, so we can’t take the records from some of them.

I tell you guys , I love this game so much , you see how I gave Jeff a long response , its not cause i’m going after jeff its cause I could talk about baseball history forever. You guys ever just sit at a bar during a baseball game with complete strangers and talk baseball ? I’ve done it for hours at my favorite watering holes. I’m just thankfull I’m old enough to have seen some of the greats , Mays was done when i saw him in 72 , but I saw all the great players from the 70’s on. I really do think guys like Dimaggio , Ted Williams Lou Gehrig and co. even from the 40’s would still be great today. Baseballs the only major sport where you can make the comparison. I think you can do the same thing with the NBA , the great players from the 60’s and after would still be great today.

Braves are dangerously close to being knocked out of the playoffs completely. Now tied in the loss column with SF, SD, and only one game in front of Col. – Once those teams make up the games they have in hand, Braves may be done. Hard to believe.

Well lefty, I agree about that but those teams in west play each other a lot the rest of the way so they will be knocking each other out..,

Braves gotta sweep nats and marlins which i think is a tough proposition, but what the heck, I am ok if they win or lose as long as they keep fighting like they are doing in this series with two rookie pitchers on the mound going against two solid philly starters

I never saw him play, it was a little before my time, but I’d put Ted Williams up as THE best. He missed so much of the prime of his career to the war, if not for that he may have had the all time HR record.

Willie Mays was exceptional, Aaron, Clemente, DiMaggio etc. all the rest of the greats, it’s hard to say one is better than the other.

Mike- I love to talk baseball with strangers, I’m doing it right now LOL

@lefty —— They didn’t have the guns years ago but i’ve heard players from years ago say they didn’t need a gun to know Koufax threw 100mph in the fiftys. Theres always been pitchers that could throw mid 90’s and up goin way back. You don’t have to be a roided up monster.
Look at the skinny kid in SF Lincecum , look at Oswalt .Some people (not sayin you jeff ) have this idea that pitchers just started throwin hard in the last 20 years or so its nuts. Bob Gibson ( 2.00 career era)
would put you on your a$$ if you crowded the plate and he threw in the high 90’s , imagine that chin music. Players excepted it as part of the game from the 80’s back , they werent a bunch of babys rushing the mound. —- ok , sorry i’m done now i cant help myself baseball does that to me

It’s okay Mike- you’re right . They didn’t even measure the pitchers back then. Bob Gibson was a mean SOB. He was fantastic in the 67 series v the Sawx. I was in 5th grade and my teacher was from Boston so she let us watch!

The reason I think Clemente is the greatest of all-time, despite his numbers, is because he was exceptional in every area of the game. He drove runs in and scored runs. He had the BEST EVER arm in the outfield, was an amazing defensive outfielder in general (to put it mildly), he cold run the bases, and he could hit the best pitchers’ best pitches. Solidly. He doesn’t have great power numbers though, which is why many look over him. He could hit homers, but he wasn’t a power-hitter.

andrew , you know what i meant , i’m not saying knowone charged the mound , it was just part of the game then . Today if you come inside they stare at the pitcher ! —— @ryan — Clemente GREAT but andrews right as far as longevity goes. — Lefty —- I heard that about Ted Williams from my father , he said he lost 5 years of his prime to the war and if you add his avg offensive statistics and multiply by those years he’s off the charts. Remember how good the Willie Stargel , Dave Parker pirates where ? I cant believe that organization has been so bad for so long , last time they were good was when Bonds was a kid. That line about talking to stangers made me laugh , i was talking like i knew you guys.

Did you ever see the list of wrestlers that have died young ?
A couple weeks ago they were talking about it on 97.5 the fanatic during Misanelli’s show and the list had like 70 guys on it that died young , i had no idea there was that many

To former Sen. John Glenn, Ted Williams was a great wingman during the Korean War — and a pretty good ballplayer, too.

“There was no one more dedicated to this country and more proud to serve his country than Ted Williams,” Glenn said …

Williams flew with Glenn on about half of his combat missions, protecting his plane from enemy fire.

The former astronaut recalled Williams showed dedication and pursued perfection both as a baseball player and as a fighter pilot.

Soon after he started flying combat missions, Williams’ plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire, Glenn said. The landing gear wouldn’t go down, and he had to crash-land his burning plane.

“Well, obviously that shakes anybody up,” Glenn said. “But he went right back to flying again. He wasn’t going to chicken out on something like that.”

Williams, baseball’s last .400 hitter, left the Boston Red Sox at the end of the 1942 season to enlist as a pilot in World War II. He did not return to the majors until four years later.

He continued to serve as a Marine Reservist and was called to serve what Glenn called “very active” combat duty in Korea in 1952.

“He never complained about that,” Glenn said. “But if he had stayed in baseball, he would have broken even more records than he did.”

WILLIAMS MISSED 5 OF WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN HIS BEST YEARS TO SERVE OUR COUNTRY. WITH THE SAFE ASSUMPTION THAT HE WOULD HAVE BEEN GOOD FOR 40-45 HRS, 100-OR-SO RBIS, ABOUT 200 HITS ETC. EACH OF THOSE YEARS … WELL, YOU DO THE MATH AS TO HOW HIS FINAL STATS WOULD READ.

Just dont miss playoff games —— enjoy this time ryan , my son is 18 and i tried to explain to him how this is the best era ever for the phils.
When i was in high school in the late 70’s it was close. Won the division
in 76,77.78 but kept losing to the dodgers in the nlcs , no wc then.
Of course we won it in 80 and lost the WS to the Orioles in 83. If I remember correctly we were up 3-1 and lost that series. So that was a nice run in phils history from 76-83. From 85 to 2002 or so we where HORRIBLE except for 93. Older people will tell you how bad the 60’s were. You probably know your Phils history i’m just trying to emphasize this might not happen again for years ( i hope not ) At least we know we have this core group for a few more years.

I believe the Phillies franchise began around the 1880’s…and we didn’t win a championship until 1980…just imagine how grueling that must have been. That’s almost 20 years longer than the BoSox drought. I bet in 1980 it was like…”Who won the WS? The Phillies??Come on now, you’re making that name up. There’s no team from here called the ‘Phillies'”…

Not so – Phillies and A’s were two separate franchises. I know – Connie Mack and I were in kindergarten together.

Phillies had never won a WS, and were utterly pathetic from about mid-’30s until late ’40s – the time when I became a Phillies fan. It was that horrible stretch, more than anything else, that enabled them to get to the 10,000 loss figure before anyone else. Who cares about that anymore – I prefer to live in the present … the time when the Philadelphia Phillies rock, and the good players want to wear a Phillies uniform.